Acquiring, storing, and correlating profile data of cellular mobile communications system&#39;s users to events

ABSTRACT

A system to collect personal and demographic data from user&#39;s of cellular mobile communications system devices. This system uses a standard web browser to collect the personal and demographic data instead of the device itself because of the limited interactive experience available to cellular mobile communications system device users. After obtaining data from the user including the user&#39;s cellular mobile communications system device&#39;s cellular phone number, a message is sent to the device. When a link is the message is activated a small event collection data software module is downloaded to the cellular mobile communications system device. The return message to the data collection entity incorporates the cellular mobile communications system device&#39;s International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI) number. This number then ties the event data collected by the module to the personal and demographic information collected from the cellular mobile communications system device user.

BACKGROUND

1. Field

The present invention relates to the collecting of personal information including demographic data (user's profile), of a cellular mobile communications system (CMCS) device's user and then monitoring and correlating that user's CMCS events to that user's profile. The events tracked may include standard cell phone events that the CMCS device is capable of, such as receiving and sending standard cell phone calls to another person or persons. The events tracked may also include the receiving and sending of short text messages (SMS), the receiving and sending of enhanced messages (EMS), or the receiving and sending of multimedia messages (MMS). Other events that may be monitored and correlated to the CMCS user profile include downloading games from the CMCS carrier, downloading ring tones, receiving and sending instant messages (IM), the receipt of “push” notifications, downloading web pages that may include, among other things, sports scores, weather forecasts, stock quotes and movie listings. The movie listings may be localized for the area from the area that CMCS device is being used or from another geographic area. Other events may include viewing advertisements and making purchases. The number of different activities and uses that a CMCS is capable of is continually increasing. The present invention is capable of capturing these future activities and usages (events). and correlating said events to the profile recorded for the CMCS device's user.

2. Description of Related Art

To determine how a CMCS device is used by a person, from whom voluntary and permissible profile data has been obtained, can be important information to the provider of services for the CMCS industry. Using techniques such as having the user fill out survey forms or keep a written log of phone usage or even sending inquiries via microbrowser enabled web pages are all subject to error due to incompleteness, user time constraints or forgetfulness. Although metering software, tracking CMCS usage, that is embedded in a CMCS operating system (OS) is well known in the art, what is needed is a method of collecting rich and complete profile data from a CMCS device user, whereby such collection does not require the use of the CMCS device to input that profile data. The reason to not use a CMCS device to collect the profile data is that a CMCS device is limited in how the interaction experience occurs. But to still be able to maintain the capability of correlating that personal and demographic data of the user to the usage of a particular CMCS device is important even though the user profile information was not obtained by the use of the CMCS device. The presently explained method of capturing a user's profile data via a fully featured web browser, making the user's experience less onerous than trying to collect the same rich profile data via the limited capability browsers available in most CMCS devices, is unique in the industry. Trying to initially acquire such profile data from the CMCS user using a CMCS device can be time consuming and many times frustrating due to the limitations of interaction often inherent in CMCS devices. These limitations include small viewing screen size, small or nonexistent keyboards, cost of the cell time used, latency of the network, and limited information contained in the decks presented to the user. Therefore the need is to have the capability of obtaining rich demographic data from a CMCS device user and being able to seamlessly tie that data to the particular CMCS device whereupon the event activities that the CMCS device is engaged in are captured and related back to that specific user.

The demographic, lifestyle and even perhaps psychological profiles of the CMCS user can be easily captured using the present invention. Besides the typical demographic data such as age, sex, income, political affiliation and residence address; personal lifestyle data can also be requested, such as magazines subscribed to, favorite hobbies, favorite authors, type of vehicle/s owned, vacations contemplated, TV viewing habits, and stores shopped at. A third area of inquiry may even include a short psychological questionnaire relating to personality aspects of the CMCS device's user. An example of this aspect is a measure of the user's patience. This may be important to know because the information presented to the CMCS user may be richer and therefore slower to download or briefer and more quickly downloaded.

The ultimate consumers of the correlated personal and demographic data with the usage of the CMCS device may desire that even more profile data be obtained from a segment of the population from whom data has already been collected. By having the email addresses, obtained in the course of implementing the present invention, of those segments of profiled persons the information consumer is interested in, those segments may then be asked additional questions related to the ultimate information consumer's interest.

The present invention disclosed accomplishes these tasks.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention a method is presented for collecting personal information from a cellular mobile communications system device's user by collecting said personal information, including the cellular mobile communications system device's cellular phone number, via a form displayed upon a standard web browser of the cellular mobile communications system device's user's computer, said form retrieved from the information requesting entity's website. Then by sending a message to the cellular mobile communications system device's cellular phone number addressed to the user, said message, when responded to, causes a downloading of a device metering software module to the cellular mobile communications system's device. When the device returns the message to the information requesting entity's server, the message contains the International Mobile Equipment Identifier (IMEI) number of the cellular mobile communications system device. The device metering software then collects information as to how the user is using the device and that information is transmitted to the collecting entity and cross referenced to the profile data provided by the user, thereby giving a correlation between the user's profile data to how the CMCS device is used (device event data). This information allows device content providers and device manufacturers valuable insights information on how the device and content is used by certain segments of the population.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention is further described in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing steps taken to correlate event data to user.

FIG. 2 shows the user inputting data over the Internet to a data collection server via a full service browser.

FIG. 3 shows a partially completed database record of the user's profile.

FIG. 4 shows a schematic of the downloading of events that were recorded and saved on the CMCS device to the data collection server.

FIG. 5 shows how a user profile may be correlated to how the CMCS device is used.

PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

Using FIG. 1 a flowchart shows the preferred embodiment of the present invention. The user goes to the website set up to collect the user's profile data 100 and fills out a form collecting this data 102. The data collection server using the cell phone number provided by the user sends a message to the CMCS device 104. The user replies to the message whereupon the data collection server downloads its event collection software to the CMCS device 106. The CMCS device, now with the software loaded, sends to the data collection server a message that includes the cell phone number and a unique device individual identification number 108. The user's profile data is then associated with the unique individual identification number 110. Upon meeting a predetermined criteria the embedded software module that has been tracking the various events of the CMCS device transmits that event data back to the data collection server 112. The event data collected may be then correlated to the profile data collected from the user 114 and analyzed 116 In FIG. 2 the rich demographic data is shown as being obtained via use of a standard web browser 201 shown in FIG. 2. The user goes to the standard web browser as found on most desktop and laptop computers and enters the URL (Uniform Resource Locater) of the personal and demographic data gathering website server, as shown in 205, the URL being set up by the entity desiring to correlate CMCS device use to a particular user's personal and demographic profile data. The user fills out personal and demographic data as show in FIG. 3, on a webpage form and also provides to the data collection site the CMCS device's cell phone number as is requested. The personal and demographic data may include but is not limited to: address, income bracket, education level, age, home ownership, club or association affiliations, sex, occupation, hobbies, sports, electronic devices owned, potential future purchasing decisions, political affiliation. The information may be encrypted or unencrypted and then transmitted to the data collection server, either compressed or uncompressed, associated with the demographic data gathering URL. The data collection server stores this information in a database 207 which later correlates this profile data to the CMCS's type of events recorded data. Along with the personal and demographic data the database also contains the user's regular Internet email address. This allows update requests to be made to the user via regular email that can contain an embedded link to an updating server. This update server can request and capture personal and demographic data changes that may have occurred since the last user profile survey.

FIG. 4 shows a typical CMCS device 400 transmitting to a cell tower 402 which, in turn, transmits to the server of the cell phone carrier 404. The carrier server uses the Internet 403 to connect to a data collection server 205 using a WAP gateway 405. The data collection server saves this information in its database 207. The CMCS device utilizes a small embedded software module in the CMCS's operating system wherein the module was downloaded from a data collection server. The software module contains a metering and notification method for capturing CMCS device events and sending a listing of the types of events to the data collection server. The software is capable of capturing all events the CMCS is engaged in. The events captured by the metering and notification software may also be restricted to a subset of all the events the CMCS device is capable of. The metering and notification software records in device memory said selected events occurring between the time of the last download of events and the time of a current download from the CMCS's memory. That information is then correlated to the rich personal and demographic data of the CMCS device's user that was previously captured.

After the CMCS device's user fills out the required personal and demographic data using an encrypted server and confirms permission requested by the data collection server to collect event data from the CMCS device, the data collection server 205 then, using the cell phone number provided by the user, sends a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) push message through the WAP gateway 405, over the Internet to the carrier server of the CMCS device and then to the CMCS device 400 as shown in FIG. 4 or, in the alternative, sends a short text message (SMS) to the CMCS device using the same route. The user then initiates the downloading of a small footprint device event metering software module to the CMCS device by responding to the WAP or SMS message. The device event metering software is then installed in the CMCS device. The now embedded device event metering software captures the CMCS's unique individual identification number and sends an SMS or other type of message containing that number to the server. One type of a CMCS device's unique individual identification number is its IMEI number (International Mobile Equipment Identifier). This is a 15-digit number (composed of four parts) that uniquely identifies an individual wireless device. The IMEI captured by the device event metering software is transmitted by the CMCS device over the cell phone network every time the event data is uploaded to the data collection server. The IMEI number is used to correlate the user's profile to the CMCS device events recorded in the database 207 because the IMEI number is a number integrally associated with the CMCS device. The CMCS device cell phone number is associated with the user's account with the carrier and is often difficult to ascertain. The CMCS device itself may not know its cell number and even when it does know its own number the Application Programming Interface (API) call to obtain that number may be privileged and only specific carrier-approved applications may have access to it. The IMEI number on the other hand, is easily accessible via a programmatic interface. Other types of individual unique identifiers of the CMCS device may also be used.

The server then correlates the IMEI number to the rich demographic data stored in the database by matching the CMCS device's cell number, that was provided by the user during the demographic data collection, to the cell number enclosed in the “From:” address line on the SMS return message. The result is a correlation of the user's rich personal and demographic data to the particular CMCS device and therefore to the events metered and sent to the data collection server during the intervening CMCS device's use since the last upload. FIG. 4 shows one method to sort and display one type of personal and demographic data correlated to several types of CMCS device events.

The metering and notification software module, besides being self-installing, has the capability to compress and encrypt the data collected during CSMS device's use. The software is also capable of determining when to download the event data collected to the collection server, depending on various selectable criteria such as memory capacity used, predetermined time intervals or other triggering events. The preferred embodiment of the present invention downloads the event history to the data collection server following the well-known HTTP or HTTPS data transmission protocol. Alternative embodiments of downloading the event data may include the use of SMS messages or email. Every download of event data will include the CMCS device's individual identification number to correlate the CMCS device's events with the user's personal and demographic data.

Although the invention has been described as setting forth specific embodiments thereof, the invention is not limited thereto. Changes in the details may be made within the spirit and the scope of the invention, said spirit and scope to be construed broadly and not to be limited by specific examples and terminology used. 

1. A method for collecting and associating profile data of a cellular mobile communications system device's user to the cellular mobile communications system device's events, the method comprising the steps of: a) collecting said profile data, including the cellular mobile communications system device's cellular phone number, via a form displayed upon a standard web browser of the cellular mobile communications system device's user's computer, said form retrieved from the information requesting entity's website; b) sending a message to the cellular mobile communications system device's cellular phone number addressed to the user, said message, when responded to, causing a downloading of a device metering software module to the cellular mobile communications system's device; and c) said device then returning a message to the information requesting entity's server, said message containing a unique individual identification number of the cellular mobile communications system device.
 2. The method as in claim 1 wherein the cellular mobile communications system device's unique individual identification number is associated with the personal information collected from the device's user.
 3. The method as in claim 1 wherein the unique individual identification number is the IMIE number.
 4. The method as in claim 2 further including collecting and transmitting to the information requesting entity, events associated with the use of the cellular mobile communications system device.
 5. The method as in claim 1 wherein the personal information collected from the cellular mobile communications system device's user is encrypted and compressed prior to transmission to the information requesting entity.
 6. The method as in claim 2 wherein the transmission of events associated with the use of the cellular mobile communications system device to the information requesting entity is dependent upon a predetermined criteria being met.
 7. The method as in claim 1 further including gaining permission from the cellular mobile communications system device's user to download the device metering software module to the cellular mobile communications system's device. 